The Failure to Tell Right from Wrong: the Possible Collapse of Western Civilization

I am convinced that Western liberal democratic civilization will fall, not because of conquest from outside it, but because its citizenry has ceased understanding right from wrong.

Cultural and moral relativism, political correctness and moral equivalency are the signs that our intellectual elites, in universities and media, predominantly, are confused over the most elementary questions of right versus wrong.

The idea that those who are less powerful can censor the speech of those who are more powerful was recently articulated by an Assistant Professor of Education, named Ozlem Sensoy, at Canada’s Simon Fraser University. Remember, this is a professor who teaches those who will soon be teaching our elementary and high school students. And remember, these remarks were specifically about justification of mob rule in censoring free speech, but her arguments can be used (and are being used) by those who would restrict the rest of liberal freedoms.

In response to students at the University of Ottawa preventing a speech by conservative columnist Ann Coulter, Sensoy congratulated the students who, in her opinion “embody the spirit of student activism.” She castigated those who sought to uphold Coulter’s freedom to give a speech because Sensoy says they “fail to acknowledge and understand … the social concept of power”. This moral relativist managed to turn the notion of freedom on its head by arguing that:
“The ‘isms’ words (racism, sexism, anti-semitism) refer to power relationships that are historic and embedded, and these relationships do not flip back and forth. The same groups that have historically held power in the U.S. and Canada continue to do so.”